Ian McKellen and Roger Allam reprise Frank and Percy for the screen

Ian McKellen and Roger Allam reprise their stage roles in Frank and Percy, the film adaptation of Ben Weatherill's two-hander play, which screens at the London film festival. Screenwriter Martin Sherman adapts the play that McKellen and Allam originally starred in at the Theatre Royal Windsor in 2023, and Sean Mathias, who directed the stage production, returns to direct the expanded movie version.

The film is a silver-years romance about finding love later in life. Allam plays Frank, a retired history teacher whose wife died of cancer a few years ago and who now walks his dog Toffee on Hampstead Heath. McKellen is Percy, an academic sociologist and climate scientist who walks his dog Bruno on the same heath. The men's bromance becomes romance as the story develops.

Who joins the leads?

The supporting cast is an all-star gallery. Joanna Lumley gives what the Guardian's review calls "a terrific contribution" as Belinda, an elegant woman poignantly suffering from early onset dementia. Belinda is Frank's sister-in-law. Stephen Fry plays Percy's now ex-partner, "a waspish and querulously self-pitying figure", in the review's words, from whom Percy has rather acrimoniously separated.

What works and what doesn't?

The Guardian's review finds the film uneven. On the credit side, it notes "a tender sweetness to this silver-years romance of new experiences and new ideas". On the debit side, it flags some sugary sentimentality, an autumnal woodwind score "telling us how to feel", and sitcom-cartoony characterisation among the supporting turns — "sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't". The verdict: the movie's easy-going good nature wins out.

What does this change for audiences? Mainly, it widens access. A two-hander that played a regional theatre in 2023 now reaches festival and, presumably, general cinema audiences, with its original stars and director intact — a rare continuity between stage and screen versions.

The London film festival screening positions the film as a bittersweet comedy about late-life love, carried by two actors reprising the roles they created.